COAST GUARD COMMANDANT READIES FOR REDUCTIONS

Uncertainty of funding that has ballooned since attacks in 2001 spurring Papp to prepare for what may lie ahead

the smallest and sometimes overlooked arm of the armed forces — has been faring fairly well, moneywise.

“It’s a steady state for us,” said Coast Guard Commandant Robert Papp in a recent interview in San Diego. “We’re not doing too badly right now. We haven’t seen any major reductions.”

The Coast Guard’s 2013 discretionary budget was proposed at $8.3 billion. That’s slightly less than the $8.6 billion it got in 2012, but Papp said that Congress has indicated in draft legislation that it will add more money, as it has in the past.

Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the Coast Guard’s budget has ballooned from $4.5 billion in 2002, as America worried anew about the security of its coasts.

But the sequester — the $1.2 trillion budget ax set to fall March 1 unless Congress decides otherwise — is a wild card.

The sequester would take $600 billion from defense and $600 billion from nondefense pocketbooks over the next decade. For the Defense Department’s $550 billion base budget, that’s a roughly 10 percent hit each year.

As a non-Pentagon service, the Coast Guard is faced with an open question.

Papp said he doesn’t know the answer.

“I haven’t been given the rules yet,” he said. “We’ve received no guidance on what our cuts will be. So, as a good sailor, if I’m going out into the ocean and I don’t know what the weather’s going to be, I make estimates and predictions. My staff is working on various scenarios and various cuts if it comes to fruition.”

The commandant, who served most of his career on Coast Guard cutters, said there’s potential for reductions that would affect the cutters, patrol craft and search helicopters working out of San Diego Bay.

“When you see boats and planes out there, some of the time they are doing missions, but a lot of times they are doing training. All of it depends on money — for fuel and to send people to schools,” Papp said.

“That’s what I fear. That one of the things we might have to look at is reducing fuel expenditures and reducing travel costs that would prevent us from keeping our people trained to the level they have to be.”

The Navy is already there. Last month it instituted a hiring freeze and announced that all nonessential travel would be canceled. Last week, the Navy said the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman will not deploy as expected this year because of budget concerns.

Papp said the Coast Guard will protect its core work: search and rescue and security of ports such as in San Diego.

“Those two are jobs number one,” he said.

The Coast Guard, which has 43,000 active-duty service members, stations 930 people in San Diego.

The local inventory of hardware includes two 378-foot cutters that transferred to San Diego in 2011, a handful of 110-foot and 87-foot patrol boats and several small, fast security vessels that escort Navy ships in and out of the bay.

The sector also flies orange-and-white MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters out of its headquarters along Harbor Drive.

That inventory will shrink in coming years when the 378-foot Vietnam-era cutters Sherman and Boutwell retire. Each has a crew of 180.

One of the Coast Guard’s biggest spending projects is the National Security Cutter. Eight of these high-tech cutters are scheduled to replace the service’s 12 existing long-range vessels.

But none of the eight will be stationed in San Diego. Papp said the proposed ports are Alameda on San Francisco Bay, Charleston, S.C., and Honolulu. The first three — the Bertholf, Waesche and Stratton — are already serving in Alameda.

The National Security Cutter, a program that started in the early 2000s, has been somewhat controversial for the Coast Guard because of rising costs. The program called for ships to cost $594 million each. Now, as the fourth and fifth are under construction, the price is just less than $700 million each.

Papp acknowledges that there were problems, and he pegs it to the loss of the service’s civilian acquisition force during downsizing in the 1990s.

There’s been uncertainty about the Coast Guard getting the funding to build all eight ships. Papp said he is optimistic because Congress has indicated that it will put initial money for the seventh ship in the 2013 budget.

“When I became commandant (in 2010), I was told, ‘You are probably not going to get all eight of those National Security Cutters. You’ll be lucky if you get five,’ ” Papp said in an interview at the San Diego Convention Center.

The third new cutter, the Stratton, suffered premature hull corrosion and leaks that were reported in May. Coast Guard officials said it was an isolated problem.

It’s reminiscent of the troubles faced by the Navy’s new littoral combat ship line, which at roughly 400 feet is about the same size.

The littorals experienced similar or worse cost growth. At one point, fleet watchers were suggesting the National Security Cutter blueprint to the Navy as a replacement for the controversial littoral program.

Papp said he is pleased with the performance of his first three new flagship cutters.

“People were questioning the quality of the work and potential performance of the ships before they were out there. One to three are out there operating, and they are magnificent,” he said. “They are probably exceeding my expectations in terms of performance.”

To do the same job with eight ships that it has with 12, the Coast Guard plans to swap crews on and off the ships. It’s a tactic the Navy employs with submarines and the littoral ships. It allows the service to save on transit costs by keeping a vessel in a location longer while providing fresh sailors.

Papp said the Coast Guard will budget four crews for three cutters, to keep the rotation going. The ships are expected to be at sea 235 days a year, instead of the 185 days by the older models.

The service is also looking at unmanned aerial vehicles to extend the reach of the National Security Cutter.

In August, the Coast Guard tested the ScanEagle aboard the Stratton. The mini surveillance plane with a 10-foot wingspan is made by Boeing Co. subsidiary Insitu. It is launched via shipboard catapult and landed by a hook that grabs its wing.

Papp said testing will continue this year.

“It shows a lot of promise for us,” the commandant said. “We can expand our horizon around each ship out there.”

Despite the eventual loss of the Sherman and Boutwell, San Diego may look forward to the addition of another new Coast Guard ship line, the Offshore Patrol Cutter.

This medium-sized ship will replace the agency’s existing 210-foot and 270-foot cutters. The first one is expected to be delivered in 2020.

Papp hinted strongly that San Diego is a likely location for at least one of the 25 that the Coast Guard expects to buy. Crews are expected to number 75 to 100 people.

“We’ll be looking for places to locate them in ports where there’s good living for our people and ports where the weather is good. While I’m not specifying any port, you might be catching my drift that places like San Diego are attractive,” he said.

“For a service as small as we are, we have a rather substantial number of people here in San Diego. And we will into the future.”